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Not at all that dog-eared look

You’d be barking up the wrong tree if you thought that the London consultancy Jaques Russell spells its name like the small dog bred to hunt foxes out of their earths.

The Jaques is minus the C and is pronounced Jakes. “Everyone assumes it’s pronounced like the dog or the Frenchman,” says partner Martin Jaques. The name was originally Jacques, but Martin’s Protestant ancestors had to drop the C to avoid automatic decapitation by the Catholics, who could identify them by this typically Huguenot epithet.

“Loads of people ask for Jack Russell, so we decided to take the piss out of them by putting the dog on our new notepaper,” adds Jaques, whose family fled from France in the 14th century. His partnership with former Garner Russell founder Stuart Russell began 15 months ago, and doggone if it hasn’t been a success.